The late Archie Whitfield, who died in 2005, worked for almost 40 years at the Savannah Morning News until he retired in 1991. He wrote the popular City Beat column and a personal column, and in 1984 the National Society of Newspaper Columnists acknowledged him with a first-place award. The following column was published April 11, 1982.

Not worth its weight in words

In recent weeks I have intercepted several letters to the editor from readers who do not like the photo that appears with my Sunday sermons. One reason is that the editor would not understand the letters and would call upon me to explain. He would want to know who I am, whose photo is up there and have we met somewhere before.

Like all editors, he is preoccupied with loftier matters but will feign great interest in any subject he is forced to confront. World War II and Hurricane David are examples.

So it was that I decided to spare him a confrontation over a less-than-spellbinding issue: How I look and how I should look.

It may be presumptuous of me to say, particularly on Easter, that readers complained about the new photo. It may be that they are lookers rather than readers. I, for example, am a looker. When the old Life magazine was in business, I was at the height of my looking. When Look magazine joined the scenery, I knew the times were right for me and the rest of the world's lookers, even though Look attempted to sneak too much writing by its lookers.

Both, as we knew them, folded, and looking as an avocation began to decline, and grew even less fruitful with the coming of television. (Do not suggest that Playboy magazine attracts lookers. Those who drip hot forehead sweat on its pages have gone a step beyond looking. Some need immediate counseling, perhaps even surgery.)

The letters suggesting incineration of the incumbent photo pretending to be me have asked for a renaissance of the photo it replaced. Some said they liked the "tilt" of my head. Some thought the expression in my eyes was reason enough to reopen the old controversy over whether it was in fact Lindbergh who was first to fly solo across the Atlantic. I promise you it wasn't me; in 1927 I was still recovering from my unfortunate experience as a Titanic messboy.

One letter wanted to know, by the way, what I was looking up at in the old photo. The truth is that I don't remember, but some less than favorably disposed toward me are convinced that the photo was made while I was being questioned by the Secret Service about news leaks in the Hoover Administration. Others have speculated that I was caught in the act of being told no by a loan shark.

The important thing is that it was not a picture of me as I look these days. I wore no glasses then except to read, and to lead present-day readers or lookers to believe that I am despectacled would be deceitful. Since that previous photo was made, I have been sentenced to wear eyeglasses for life. (I have made no decision as to whether I shall wear them in death. People who poke their noses into coffins like to compare notes on how the deceased looks, usually in comparison with how he or she looked before death set it. I will probably vote for wearing eyeglasses in the hereafter, probably prescription sunglasses to shield my eyes from the bright lights of downtown Hell.)

When I decided to bring my photo up to date, I considered the possibility of having a new image struck by the News-Press photo department, but ruled it out. They sit you on a stool, surround you with lights, tell you to lift your chin and turn your head to the right without moving it, and giggle all the while. I was, frankly, fearful that a picture made by our studio might turn out looking exactly like me, a wretched prospect no human wants to ponder.

We all go through life believing we look better than we do, and this is a precious right in free societies as well as in those societies to which you must buy a ticket.

Lookers who may be curious about the "new" photo deserve a sliver of truth: It is a small piece of a picture taken at Walt Disney World a year or so ago, on my only visit, and the photographer was from the free-lunch staff, also know as the press relations department. There was another person in the picture, a rate who made good, a Mickey Mouse.

The new picture looks no more like me than its predecessor. That probably makes for a better world.